Work Center Structure
The work center structure is used extensively throughout the work management areas of M3 Maintenance. Work centers generally define working groups associated within the organization. These groups may be internal or external.
Work centers are also used in M3 manufacturing areas to identify resources used to manufacture products.
Description
The work center structure has three main levels within the plant maintenance system: department, planning area, and work center.
Work centers are used to identify the group that will fulfill operations or tasks within the organization. In a traditional engineering environment, these may consist of mechanical, electrical and instrumentation crafts. In a more modern company, they could be replaced by teams. In this case, the work centers could be Team 1, Team 2, and so on. If necessary, a work center could even be an individual person. This is not, however, the normal case as individuals are generally defined within the human resources module and linked to jobs through that route.
Work centers can also be for external organizations such as contractors. In this case, the system will automatically generate purchase order proposals to accompany the work order and therefore provide cost updates through invoices.
The work center level keeps extensive information about the group including costs, availability, efficiency, and shifts patterns. It will even define what type of information each work center can view.
In a simple organization, the department, or top level, could be divided into maintenance and operations. Departments can be further broken down into the areas of responsibility or planning areas. Depending on the organization, these could relate to individual supervisors or planners.